On the move!
Agh! You’re still here? My new site and weblog, ianking.ca is now up and running; new posts are building up over there, never to be mirrored here. Go! What are you waiting for? All the stuff worth keeping has been migrated over to the new server, and I don’t anticipate making any more posts here.
Bloggers and webmasters: Update your links! Simply replace vancouverscrum.blogspot.com with www.ianking.ca in your blogrolls or bookmarks to point to the new site. Old posts will remain on this server for as long as the people at Blogger/Google allow them to remain; unfortunately, I’m not going to bother to come up with any way of converting permalinks on this blog to their corresponding posts on the new site. Yes, I plead laziness. I also realize the irony of switching away from Blogger just it starts to add features that the demanding blog nerds insist upon.
Thanks for reading and linking, and see you over at ianking.ca!
—Ian King, December 13, 2004
Monday, September 16, 2002
God forbid that there be such a thing as negative campaigning in civic politics!
Okay, so the civic party that is in a minority position on the city school board is running a web site that allows citizens to list their complaints about the NPA-dominated board's decisions. Where's the smear? It seems like politics as usual.
And, despite what the name might suggest, the Non-Partisan Association of Vancouver is as partsan as any political organization.
A quick note on 'negative' campaign tactics: voters always tell pollsters that they don't like campaigns that point out the opponents' flaws. However, voters often respond to the negative campaigns in the desired manner -- think of the Willie Horton ads of George H.W. Bush's 1988 presidential campaign or Jesse Helms's "White Hands" television ad that attacked affirmative action by appealing to the "you were more qualified, but you didn't get hired because you're white" line of 'reasoning.'
What didn't work in Canada was the 1993 Tory ads that drew attention to Jean Chrétien's facial palsy, or the 1997 Reform ads attacking French-Canadian leaders. You don't attack others over things which they can't control: it'll backfire almost every time.
Reports, opinions, columns, and anything else on this site, are © 2002-2003 Ian King unless otherwise noted. Permission granted to use material on this site for non-commercial purposes provided that the work is attributed to the original author. All other uses require specific permission of the original author. Contact weblog owner with any inquiries.
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